Changes

Herein we list potential campaigns for the group to play. Please refer to them when voting on a next campaign.

These are in approximately the order of how much I'd like to run them right now. They are also in order of least to most "crunchy" (i.e. how heavy they lean on the numbers/a system and how much the player would need to get familiar with the system).

* I've also been learning Old English and gotten interested in some bits of linguistics. I promise not to invent a language and make you learn it, I am no Tolkien.

A low-magic fantasy campaign in a world based loosely on a fantasy Europe-esque dark ages-kind of setting.

The setting and mechanics will be home-brew, or possibly based on Burning Wheel.

You are all civilians. You are not gallant knights, you are not fire-flinging wizards. You aren't even soldiers, but you just might be heroes.

The players will all be civilian "classes", using a freeform skill selection with a player determined aspirational career or class. The more specific the skill, the better it is for specific situations, but the less applicable it will be in general (obviously). Example skills could be the obvious appropriate ones from D&D or similar, like speechcraft, diplomacy, knowledge: whatever, craft: mundane item, brewing, etc; or make up your own (with GM approval/discussion on effectiveness/availability). Some magic related skills are fine, but keep in mind that your character is not, and can never be, a wizard or cleric in the D&D sense.

For example: a character could select skills like "appraise item", "haggle", and "knowledge: (locality)", and pick for a career "travelling merchant" or just "merchant". They could also just as well pick for a career something like "quartermaster" or "innkeeper" (though innkeeper may be more difficult to play as a member of a potentially travelling group).

[[File:Heartoftheforestdraw.jpg|thumb|x200px|Danger lurks in the dark places, but power, too, for those willing to pay the price.]]

The starting region has the flavor of continental Europe, lol fantasy trope. Cultures mix and trade enough to bring in the occasional people and goods from neighboring regions. This is not a time of empire, but of a collection of generally independent kingdoms coexisting or feuding as it is politically expedient.

Similarly, there is no monolithic Church. Think instead of decentralized Greek or Germanic paganism with strains of animism and ancestor worship.

You all start out as residents of a village on the cusp of townhood at the mountainous outskirts of your kingdom. Until relatively recently, the native people in your area didn't really care or even know much about the specifics of a war that reached the capital, where the previous King was killed, and the invading barbarian warrior Queen who took his throne. That is, until her soldiers and officials showed up to reopen the nearly forgotten mines of the nearby mountains. As the mines were made operational, trade and attention were brought to your village for the first time in the memory of anyone living there. And are there more guards patrolling the roads these days?

The times are changing, and opportunity abounds for those who can change with them.

[[File:Darkforest.jpg|thumb|Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?]]

The title really only applies to what I would call the prologue of the story.

Probably Burning Wheel, I have been highly recommended it. I'll pick something for sure before we start.

A village set deep in an old-growth forest, far from any other sign of civilization with only very occasional-to-rare outside contact. None of the children and only a few of the adults have ever been outside the village.

The forest is full of ruins and secrets, the children are not encouraged to explore.

Our heroes have been taught since an early age that shadows and the darkness are their friend. It protects them from the monsters in the world outside the village. It keeps them hidden from the eyes of those who might seek to harm them.

As we meet them, they are just coming of age in the village, and are nearing the end of their preparations to face the pilgrimage to the ruins nearby which marks their transition into adulthood.

I will eventually finish my campaign/setting to follow up from my [[Seldon Plan (2015)|preview]] test campaign.

I'll put more information here as I flesh it out.

Home-brew, probably skill based.

A frontier world a few generations or so after the war that broke the power of the slaver spirits. Humans from the Emberfang Isles have colonized the western coast of a large continent to the east. The Emberfang Isles themselves have become a monument to the Emperor who led them and their Elvish allies in the war, the Emperor who disappeared after their victory.

???

Mine are listed in no particular order. World Wide Wrestling is the least crunchy of the systems that I'm looking at, though I think any of these games should be fairly accessible.

* I will also try to fuck with your heads by making characters surprise you. I believe that any NPC who shows up more than once or twice should be a complicated, realistic person, and I think I can safely say that I've had pretty decent success with making cool, unique NPCs in past campaigns. This is something I plan to continue working on.

''Diana paused at the edge of the ravine and listened.''

''"An Indian raiding party..."''

The game is meant to be extremely simple to learn and play. Everybody picks a character (the setting is meant to be played with everyone being a premade character like Diana, Fergie, etc. but we can discuss whether you would want to just play your own group allied with Diana or one of the other main figures in the setting, or whether you'd want to control Diana and friends yourselves...I'm open on this) and the whole thing is meant to play out like a television series.

There's equipment, vehicles, gadgets, etc. but everything pretty much follows these rules for how things work in the game.

Imagine that 3,000 years from now, our descendants decide to make a holo-novel series about the 21st century. Our descendants, as remote from us as we are from the ancient Greeks, and with as many gaps in their knowledge. With the same loving attention to historical accuracy that we have come to expect from our own television producers.

It's the real world as far as the characters are concerned, but it's far from a real world by our standards.

The autocratic Queen Elizabeth sits on the throne of England, almost entirely rural with the exception of the sprawling metropolis known as MegaLondon 1 at its center. She has ordered the death of Princess Diana for divorcing her son, the Bonnie Prince Charlie. Aided in her plots by the evil sorceress Thatcher, Queen Elizabeth forces Diana into exile in the nearby country of Britannia - ruled over by Queen Victoria and her red-coated Beefeater armies. To the north, the free lands of Scotchland are a desert wasteland ruled over by kilt-wearing barbarians riding in spike-festooned steam cars.

Diana left Bonnie Prince Charlie because she has been awakened to the corrupt nature of her era, and the secret truth behind it. Suspecting her husband was unfaithful, Diana investigated and uncovered evidence of Charlie's involvement in arms dealings and trafficking of the drug "tobacco" to children in third-world countries. Fleeing the country, Diana uncovered evidence that the world has been overrun by agents of the evil God of War, Landmines. Armed with this knowledge, Diana swears that she will not rest until she can free the world of the evil of Landmines forever as the greatest hero of her times. Allying herself with stout heroes like Fergie, the barbarian chief Red Ken, Wild Bill Gates, and others.

Continuing the adventures of the Ursine Order, now the most revered knights in Salisbury.

Almost all of us have played Pendragon in the past during the Uther Phase. The Anarchy Phase still uses the same rules, but is much more dangerous. The game takes place where each session is intended to represent one year of time in the game, and is followed by a winter phase where you can pimp out your manor, bone your spouse, and try to groom your heirs into powerful and honorable knights themselves.

The system is, admittedly, somewhat crunchy when it gets to the winter phase, but it's up to you how much we go into that stuff. Overall the game is all based around the d20, with d6s for damage rolls.

Pendragon takes place during the years leading up to, during, and at the end of the rule of King Arthur. The plot for this game takes place over 85 years. This is a world of magic, intrigue, romance, chivalry, myth, war, and diplomacy. The Arthurian cycle is probably the most well-known and well-loved epic of the western world. This game's version of the myth combines Le Morte D'Arthur by Mallory with the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth, T.H. White's The Once and Future King, and even some stuff from the original Welsh myths.

When we last left the Brotherhood of the Bear, our heroes had narrowly survived assassination at the hands of the vile Saxons at a feast after the Battle of St. Albans. Virtually all of the nobility of Logres was killed, leaving the land without any obvious ruler. Worse still, one of the fallen lords was Earl Roderick of Salisbury, the Ursine Order's sovereign. Salisbury is now in the hands of Robert, a young child, and is being stewarded by his mother, Earl Roderick's widow.

Currently the land is torn between the threats and blackmail of Saxon lords from Sussex, Wessex, and Essex, the promises of Briton kings from the north and west, and the rumors of an heir to Madoc, Uther's fallen son. The knights of Salisbury have a chance to influence the decisions of the Countess and determine the future of Salisbury.